In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: If in a moment of weakness you think in your heart, "I'm going to do it," if you'll just stop and ask yourself this one single question: What are the lasting consequences of this act? If you, in just a brief few seconds of pure reasoning, ask yourself the question, and don't let Satan slip the lie in under that to say, "But nobody will ever know," because you don't know that. Ask yourself this question: What are the lasting consequences of this act? My friend, more than likely, you won't do it.

Guest (Male): Impulsive decisions—those quick choices we make are often motivated by emotion and desire and fail to consider the long-term results. Today on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, we continue our study of the book of 2 Samuel. Find motivation to pray and think first as we examine the disastrous decision King David made in a moment of weakness. Let's listen in to Dr. Stanley's message.

Dr. Charles Stanley: If you'll turn to 2 Samuel chapter 11. 2 Samuel chapter 11, and tonight we are coming to one of the two passages that most people think about when they think about David. One's Goliath and the other's Bathsheba. So I want us to read the first five verses and I want to give you a little background and then I want to talk about a moment of weakness.

So I want you to get a pencil and a piece of paper—and a good-sized piece of paper tonight—because I believe the Lord will say something to you, if you allow Him, that will make a difference in your life and may protect you from some difficulty or heartache or hardship or trial, misfortune, embarrassment. Something every father ought to be able to share with their sons and daughters, at least to some degree.

So, a moment of weakness. Chapter 11, verse one. It came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab—that's his commanding general now—and his servants with him and all Israel. And they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabbah, but David tarried still at Jerusalem.

And it came to pass in an evening-tide—now that was a little late on in the afternoon—that David arose from off his bed, walked upon the roof of the king's house. And from the roof he saw a woman washing herself, and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. And David sent and inquired after the woman, and one said, "Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"

And David sent messengers and took her, and she came in unto him and he lay with her, for she was purified from her uncleanness, and she returned unto her house. And the woman conceived and sent and told David and said, "I am with child."

Here is the man at the pinnacle and the very peak of his glory and all of a sudden he takes a plunge. A shadow begins to loom over the life of the one man that all of Israel thought they could put their trust in and never fail them. Which ought to be a warning to you and to me: don't ever put your faith in any man or in any woman because everybody has at least one clay foot.

And here is an example, not only of a fall but a beautiful example of God's forgiveness. So when you and I come and we've been through 1 Samuel and now the 10 chapters of 2 Samuel, and everything we've seen about David just made us say, "Rah-rah-rah for David," and I want to tell you, my friend, when we come to this chapter, don't criticize him too harshly because God, even though He chastened him, the Bible says that God forgave him and loved him and he still remained the king of Israel.

So, if you'll recall that at this particular time, that the scripture teaches us that around the springtime, the soldiers went out to battle. That was the most convenient time to battle; wasn't too cold, wasn't too hot. But on this occasion, David, who always led his men in battle, decided to stay at home.

And Joab, who is his commanding general, was leading the fight and more than likely David by now felt like that he had taken care of most of the big armies and the strong enemies, so he would let his commanding general take charge. And so he's at home. And he was resting in the afternoon and walking around the top of the palace there.

He looked down and saw a very lovely, very beautiful woman taking a bath. When he saw her, his manly lust got the best of him and he sent somebody to find out who she was, and he called her, and the scripture says that he brought her to the palace. Now what you have to remember is that the king in those days was a sovereign unto himself. They could have this law today; if they changed their mind tomorrow, then whatever they said tomorrow was the law.

Whatever they said was the law. So the king was the sovereign unto himself. If David said, "Bring Uriah's wife," nobody questioned that. Neither Uriah nor Bathsheba. And of course, on this occasion, Uriah did not know anything about it—Uriah, her husband.

So the scripture says he brought Bathsheba to his house, and in the language of the 20th century, he went to bed with her. And the scripture says that some time later he found out that she was going to have a baby. And as a result of that, he called Uriah, her husband, off the battlefield and said—was asking about the battle and said, "Why don't you go home and spend the night with your wife?"

And it's interesting what he said in the 11th verse of the 11th chapter. Uriah said to David, "The Ark and Israel and Judah abide in tents, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open fields. Shall I then go into mine house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? As thou livest and as thy soul livest, I will not do this thing," which was defiance of what David said.

But it wasn't a motivation of defiance; it was a motivation of love and loyalty and devotion to his commanding general Joab and to David his king. And of course David couldn't say anything about that. That is a confession of a man who not only was guilty—listen, he was guilty of adultery. He was guilty of murder, because what he did, when he couldn't get rid of Uriah any other way and make him go to bed with his wife, he sent him out and he sent a note to Joab. He said, "Joab, when you attack the city, get close to the walls of the city, but pull back from Uriah and be sure that he is slain in battle."

And that's exactly what he did. So he was guilty of adultery. He was guilty of deliberate murder of one of his choicest soldiers. He was guilty of lying. He was guilty of deceit. He was guilty of involving other people in his crime and in his sin. He was guilty of bringing a mark and a shadow over the whole nation of Israel.

And yet, in spite of that, the Bible says that through Nathan pointing out his sin, he confessed his sin, repented of it, and I think a beautiful example of his repentance is Psalm 51, and the Bible says that God forgave him of his sin.

But what I want to deal with here is this: that here is David, the strong, valiant king, man of God, pinnacle of his time of service before God with the whole nation of Israel, and in a moment—and I'm sure that may not have been the first time he ever saw that woman take a bath—in a moment of weakness, he sent for her and he knew what he intended to do before he ever sent for her. So it was a deliberate act on his part.

I want us to analyze a moment of weakness, because all of us—now let's get real honest now, let's face it—all of us have our moments of weakness. It may be to steal, it may be to lie, it may be to be deceptive, it may be to gossip, it may be immorality, it may be sensuality. But everybody has a weakness at some time or the other or a number of weaknesses that we have to deal with in our life.

So I want us to analyze a moment of weakness because so many people have fallen in a given moment. You may have walked into the same situation many times in your life and have come out victorious, but one moment of weakness and down you and I have seen many people go down in a moment of weakness. So I want us to analyze it, and I want us to see seven things about it. So if you want to put a heading on this, you just put "Analysis of a Moment of Weakness," because I want us to analyze seven aspects of that.

The first thing I want to say, number one, it is a universal problem. I've never met anybody that didn't have some weakness. If you'll start all the way back from the Garden of Eden and go all the way through every single person in the Bible that has any part of their life described at all, you can see their weakness.

All right, so the first thing is that it is a universal problem. Now if you say, "I've got all strengths and no weaknesses," I want to tell you, you're on your way to a big, surprising collapse. Weaknesses in the lives of God's people as well as the unbeliever is a universal problem; all of us need to understand that.

The second thing is this: and that is, the most spiritual of God's people have their weaknesses, and so often people can look at someone else and say, "Well now, if I had her spirituality or if I had his spirituality, or if I knew the scriptures like she knows them or he knows them, then I'm sure I will overcome my weaknesses," and I want to tell you, that's not necessarily true.

The strongest and most spiritual of God's servants—men and women and young people—have their weaknesses they have to deal with. So you see, if you isolate yourself and say, "Well, if I were so and so and I had so and so, I wouldn't be like this," no, that's not true. Because you look back to a man like David—think of all the psalms he wrote, the tremendous insight into God that David had.

And a man who had a revelation from God in the Old Testament, probably unequaled until we get to the New Testament, the insights into God that he and his son Solomon had, and both of them had the same problem.

All right, the third thing I want you to notice here is this: that moments of weakness—now we said first of all they're universal; secondly, the most spiritual of God's people have their moments of weakness—third thing I want you to notice is this: that oftentimes they come after periods of great success. These moments of weakness, when someone falls, oftentimes come after periods of great success.

I think we have to look at his life and realize that he'd been so successful, I'm sure he must have thought he had a right to enjoy himself, but not with another man's wife. He did have the right, by the sovereign power given to a king; he may have thought within himself, "Well, it's my privilege to go to bed with Bathsheba if I choose to." But it wasn't his privilege in God's eyes.

Overconfidence breeds all kinds of—listen—of half-truths. It may look like the truth up here, but when you look beneath it, it is a lie straight out of hell. And here was a man, not out of a period of weariness but rather out of a period of overconfidence because of his success.

All right, the fourth thing under that analysis is this: oftentimes it comes after a period of relaxation and idleness. And this too is true of David. A period of relaxation and idleness. Here he was not going out to battle as normal, and he decided that he would just stay at home through this season of war during the spring.

And I'll tell you why I know he was idle: he was asleep in the afternoon. Now a king who is running his business and doing the things he ought to be doing shouldn't have been lying around, a little slothful and indolent in the afternoon when there was so much to be done, because a king was a very, very busy man.

So he's just taking it easy, slumbering away in the afternoon, and David had allowed himself to become idle. But now, instead of seeking the Lord, instead of seeking God's guidance and His direction and filling his mind and heart with the things of God, David has allowed himself to become idle. In his period of relaxation, he has become idle, and Satan caught him right at a moment of weakness.

Now all of us have heard all of our life that an idle mind is a devil's workshop. You absolutely better believe that it's true. God never intends for us to be idle. And this is why I say—now I don't want you to think that I'm opposed to retirement. I am opposed to retirement if it means suddenly become idle and do nothing.

I believe if God blesses you to the point and you can cease working in your present vocation, then you ought to offer yourself to God as full-time as your mind and body will allow to serve the living God until Jesus sees fit to call you home. Man, when you get excited about Jesus Christ and you see God doing things in your life, you don't want to sit around and rust out. You want to give your life away, and the more you give yourself and the longer you give yourself, I believe the natural tendency is to live longer.

But here he was, relaxing in idleness. And David got in trouble with an idle mind, relaxing, indolent, and becoming a little bit lazy, just idling away the afternoons when he had a tremendous responsibility as the king of Israel. So we have to be careful, not only after successes, whether you feel weary or whether you feel overconfident, but in those times of relaxation and idleness, you shouldn't allow it.

Number five. A moment of weakness that results in disobedience has its root in previous disobedience. Now get that one down. That a moment of weakness that results in disobedience has its root in previous disobedience. You say, "Well now, wait a minute. What about David? Because he'd been faithful to the Lord all these years. How can you say that this moment of weakness whereby he committed an immoral act, a sensual act, how can you say that this stems from a previous root disobedience?"

Well, it has to. It always does. We don't just suddenly sin with no root cause. There is a root cause. Let me tell you what it is with David. You'll recall that when Saul—he promised him one wife and gave him another one. He promised him Michal but then he gave Michal to someone else. So he finally got Michal after Saul died.

Then he got Abigail. He was going to kill Abigail's husband, but he didn't do that. God prevented him from doing that. Then he took another wife called Ahinoam, I believe is her name. Then he took four more in Hebron and a whole bunch of them in Jerusalem.

So David violated the law of God by having so many wives. So here David is falling into the same trap that God warned the kings of Israel. There are several specific things that God said the kings were not to become involved in, and he did.

And God allowed it, but it was not the perfect plan, the perfect will of God, and it was not His will for David. But he just sort of did that, and you see being the king, he was a sovereign to himself and he could make his own rules. And David made some mistakes. He had a problem of sensuality back there somewhere because one wife wasn't sufficient for him, nor were two, nor were three, nor were seven, nor were—no telling how many he had.

And if he didn't have a root problem there, he would not have fallen so quickly with Bathsheba. So when you and I look around and we say, "Lord, what is my weakness?" or in a moment of weakness we may fall in some area, you can look back to say, "What is the root cause?" and you see, if you have a tendency in some area, then you need to begin to deal with the root.

Number six. A moment of weakness—get this down—a moment of weakness can destroy everything you have worked for in the past. When you fall in a moment of weakness, it can destroy everything you've worked for in the past. And you see David, listen, in a fit of passion, in a fit of lust, he threw everything in the past to the wind and the only thing that mattered to him was that he gratified the lust of his flesh at that moment.

Not thinking about all that God had done for him in the past and the goodness and the graciousness and the kindness and the generosity and the protection and the fact that God had turned the whole nation of Israel in love and loyalty to him. But in that moment of weakness, what he did not recognize or refused to take time to recognize was what he could destroy of the past in that moment of weakness.

And everybody found out about it after a while. Their loyalty, their love, their disappointment, all began to affect the people of God. And not only that, when other nations would hear about that, they would think, "Well, the people will not follow David," and they would just mount up their own courage for an attack upon the nation of Israel.

Then the seventh thing. A moment of weakness when we disobey God can result in painful and lasting consequences. Painful and lasting consequences. When in a moment of weakness we fall, disobey God, it can result in painful and lasting consequences. Now we'll go into more detail later, but let me just give you a little summary of what happened.

First of all, David ended up killing a man, stealing, lying, cheating, being exposed. The baby died. In his own family there was a rape. In his own family there was a murder. His own son Absalom rebelled against him and took the kingdom away from him for a period of time. His son Absalom was finally killed by his right-hand man Joab.

And when Nathan said to him, "The sword will not depart out of your family," if you look in verse 10 of chapter 12, "Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house, because you've despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife." Nathan said, "All the rest of your days, as a result of the consequence of this sin, the sword shall never depart from your life."

And if you read from chapter 11 on to the rest of the end of this book of 2 Samuel, you'll find out how God did exactly what Nathan said. The lasting consequence was not worth the act. Now think about this, and I think I want to say this to young people as well as adults.

If in a moment of weakness you think in your heart, "I'm going to do it," if you'll just stop and ask yourself this one single question: What are the lasting consequences of this act? If you, in just a brief few seconds of pure reasoning, ask yourself the question: What are the consequences? What are the future consequences of this act? And don't let Satan slip the lie in under that to say, "But nobody will ever know," because you don't know that.

Ask yourself this question: What are the lasting consequences of this act? My friend, more than likely, you won't do it.

Guest (Male): Are you about to make a choice that will have a long-lasting or permanent consequence? Remember the warning you heard in Dr. Stanley's message and avoid the mistake David made. Before you deliberately decide to sin, stop and carefully consider the likely results.

To listen again, click the "Today on Radio" link at Intouch.org, and that's where you'll find free resources that can help you learn to consistently make decisions that are pleasing to the Lord. If you'd like to order a copy of today's complete message, open our online bookstore and the title is "A Moment of Weakness," or order our teaching set titled "Pursuing God's Heart: A Study of 1st and 2nd Samuel." Our web address again is Intouch.org, or you can call or text us simply at 1-800-InTouch. You can also write us at In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia, 30357. Or again, call 1-800-InTouch.

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Dr. Charles Stanley: Let your time and your schedule and everything about you revolve around this: that you and I are to develop and continue to develop this ongoing, intimate, wonderful, exciting, satisfying, indescribable, wonderful, incomparable relationship with a personal God.

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Guest (Male): You're listening to In Touch. If you're a believer, are you sharing the gospel—the good news that changed your life? Here's a moment with Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: When it comes to investing in eternity, you're talking about investing in something that lasts forever. The only thing on this earth that is going to last forever is the soul of a person. The Bible says one of these days, this old earth, it’s all going to be burned up, it’s all going to be gone. Heavens and earth going to blow away and new heavens and a new earth.

What will remain for eternity is your soul, my soul, and the soul of every person who's ever lived. The Bible says it is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment. Not once to die and that be the end of you.

So when we think about investing in eternity, we're talking about investing in people's lives all over the world who desperately need to hear the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The reason you may be a Christian is because somebody told you. And the reason somebody told you is because somebody sent someone and made it possible for you to hear. You heard, you believed, you trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, He made you a brand new creature in Christ. Your whole life has been changed.

There is a world of people out there, first of all, who've never heard. Many of them have heard but have not believed. Does that mean we're to stop telling them? No. We're to keep on telling them, keep on shouting the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.

Guest (Male): Learn more about the hope you can have through faith in Jesus Christ at Intouch.org. Is there someone who needs a truth that you heard today? Share it with them and then tell us what happened. Upcoming on In Touch, we'll hear some biblical solutions to help us handle the inevitable difficulties that will come our way. Be back with us again for In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.